1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to Peer to Peer (P2P) communication between terminals without a base station. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus and method for allocating frequency resources to perform P2P communication between terminals.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, methods of allocating frequency resources so as to perform Peer to Peer (P2P) communication are classified into two categories. The first is a method of allocating frequency resources that are the same as those used by a base station and terminals to perform communication between terminals. The second is a method of allocating dedicated frequency resources that are different from those used for cellular communication.
When different frequency resources are allocated for use during P2P communication as compared to the resources used during cellular communication, the hardware and communication resources used to perform the P2P communication between terminals are different from those used to perform cellular communication. For example, if the cellular communication uses frequency resources and hardware for second Generation (2G) and third Generation (3G) communications, and the P2P communication uses other frequency resources and hardware such as ZigBee, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc., dual mode hardware must be implemented in order to perform both the P2P communication and the cellular communication in the same device. The implementation of dual mode hardware increases the device complexity and price. Furthermore, the overall performance of P2P communication devices is lower than that of cellular communication devices, making it difficult to obtain a satisfactory P2P communication transmission rate.
On the other hand, if the same frequency resources are allocated for both the P2P communication and the cellular communication, some of the cellular frequency resources must be allocated as frequency resources for the P2P communication. In this case, since providers cannot use all of the frequency resources for cellular communication, if providers fail to establish a sufficient business model for the P2P communication, it is likely that providers will not prefer to allocate frequency resources for P2P communication. Also, user communication charges for the P2P communication may increase.